Nginx Docker Compose Quick Web Server with Nginx on Docker Compose

Maybe you need a web server for a simple static site. For instance, to test out the <script type="module">. Perform a Lighthouse Audit. Or preview your HTML page through you phone.

But it can be tedious to install, configure & fire up a web server on your local machine.

Today I'm going to show you how you can save some precious time & serve your static assets with this simple Docker Compose configuration.

Steps

1 — Go back to your base directory

$ cd ~/

2 — Create the working directory

$ mkdir docker-nginx-demo

3 — Go into that directory

$ cd docker-nginx-demo

4 — Create the Docker & Docker Compose configuration

$ touch docker-compose.yaml

5 — Create the directory that will hold your HTML files

$ mkdir src

6 — Write something for your first page

$ echo "Hello world!" > src/index.html

7 — Edit your Docker Compose configuration file

$ vim docker-compose.yaml

version: "3"

services:
    client:
        image: nginx
        ports:
            - 8000:80
        volumes:
            - ./src:/usr/share/nginx/html

8 — Start the server

$ docker-compose up --detach

9 — Open your page

$ chromium http://localhost:8000

10 — Enjoy!

That's it! You can enjoy your HTML page with your favorite browser at http://localhost:8000.

No need for any Apache, NGINX, MAMP, XAMPP, LAMP or any web server installed on your machine. Only Docker & Docker Compose are needed!

Comments

[fab]

Then you can add a simple healthcheck and everything will be monitored forever :)

version: "3"

services:
    client:
        image: nginx
        ports:
            - 8000:80
        volumes:
            - ./src:/usr/share/nginx/html

    healthcheck:
        test: curl --fail http://localhost || exit 1
        interval: 60s
        retries: 5
        start_period: 20s
        timeout: 10s

[Andy Medlicott]

Thanks! Simple and effective! :-)

[Sathish Kumar Thiyagarajan]

Very Useful . I have a doubt. How do we load modules of Nginx like monicalent.com/blog/2019/01/06/res... .

[CaptDragon]

this is the way!

[Tomas Fernandez]

Nice post! I think the Dockerfile contents are missing in the example.

[Amin]

Yes it's a mistake. At first I though I would need a Dockerfile but not at all. That's what made me happy about that! But I'll correct the article. Thanks for pointing that out!